


Madrugada

by LunaLikewell



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (not presented as a coping mechanism just a new years party), 5+1, ADHD, Acid Burns, Canon-Typical Violence, Explosions, F/M, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Markers, New Years, Nobody is Dead, PTSD, Panic Attack, Self-Harm, Sharpies, Trauma, Underage Drinking, Wings, Writing on Skin, but not like wing!fic wings, drawing on people, fear of the dark, jeep makeouts, solidarity among survivors of trauma, time loss (during panic attack)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:43:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1941582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaLikewell/pseuds/LunaLikewell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There have been to many close calls, too many losses, and Stiles and Lydia find themselves fending off the darkness as often as they battle the creatures that inhabit it.</p><p>Or the 5+1 in which people draw on each other to calm their minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madrugada

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melesmeles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melesmeles/gifts).



> Madrugada (mah-droo-gah'-dah) is a Portuguese word that refers to the hours between midnight and sunrise. Perhaps the best English equivalent is “the wee hours of the morning”.
> 
> I wrote this before Season 3 went and killed everyone. I refuse to write out perfectly good characters for the sake of canon compliance. So it’s just one of those AUs where no one was fridged and the characters fight off a lot of Little Bads in addition to the Big Bads. (Honestly, I started writing this a year ago, between the deaths of Erica and Boyd. I'm not speedy when it comes to writing the last section of something and editing to post.)
> 
> Love and gratitude to my partner/beta [melesmeles](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Melesmeles) who may have provided the inspiration for the whole drawing-on-people theme. Any remaining mistakes are on me and my impatience.
> 
>  
> 
> **For additional information on the warnings, please see the endnotes.**

1 -

The spell has to last until Scott is in place, and they have to break it at just the right moment, or else Scott, Isaac, and Allison will be trapped when the blast hits. It’s timed perfectly. It will work. Stiles knows this because Lydia said so with that conviction in her voice.

There’s only one person these days who can look Stiles in the eyes, say “it will work,” and make him believe her.

Lydia Martin is sitting next to him, speaking in time with him. The spell they’re working on is repetitive; they can’t stop. If one of them lapses the whole thing will weaken, and when Stiles starts to forget how to say the words that will _break_ it, he begins to panic.

He waves a hand at her, and jabs a finger at the text in front of them, aiming for the words that he’s read a thousand times, but never said out loud. You don’t say these kinds of words out loud unless you mean them.

Without missing a beat, without breaking her chant, Lydia pulls the Sharpie out of Stiles’s back pocket (some other day he would have stopped everything just to revel in the fact that Lydia Martin effectively just touched his butt) and tugs his left arm towards her.

In quick, crisp strokes of the Sharpie, she writes out the words - not their spelling, but their phonetic pronunciation - down his left forearm and up his right. Stiles makes a mental note to be completely awestruck by her ability to write one thing and chant another, but right now he pushes the amazement aside in preparation for the signal. He can feel the power of their chant building, and hopes that Scott will get there soon, because he isn’t sure that he and Lydia will be able to break the spell if they keep it going much longer.

Then there’s the gunshot - Allison’s signal - and Stiles reads out the words Lydia has given him as she calls them out, too. There’s a compression of _something_ \- the air? - around them, and then his vision grays out.

Stiles and Lydia are both still reeling from the release of that bizarre pressure when they hear three pairs of footsteps running, a shout, and the explosion.

It was timed perfectly. It worked.

Hours later, Stiles stands in the shower, watching sooty water run down the drain. He stares at the letters still lingering on his skin. He almost regrets the fact that he has to wash them off. It takes a lot of scrubbing, but eventually the last of the ink is gone, and his skin looks too pink and oddly bare.

He stops thinking about it in favor of falling into bed for a couple hours before school.

 

2-

The creatures spit acid. They spit acid and Stiles cannot pronounce their name. He has taken to calling them “those things” or “the whatsits” or “holy-shit-it-was-here-a-second-ago-where-the-FUCK-did-it-go”.

The last one is by far his least favorite, because it precipitated some pretty epic levels of panic among the werewolves. For once, they were up against something that really hurt them. Stiles took a small sort of perverse joy in seeing Derek hiss at his acid burns as they healed at a normal, human rate. Derek has, of course, lost his shirt in the heat of the hunt (the man is fucking talented when it comes to shirt-loss, Stiles thinks), and the sight of the burn on one side of his abs is not a pretty one. Stiles sends Derek and Scott off to his Jeep, where they’ll find everything they need to neutralize the acid.

Stiles does not take his shirt off in front of other people. He hasn’t since his mom got sick. He doesn’t go swimming, even though he’s a good swimmer. He changes in the bathroom when he sleeps over at Scott’s. He finds ways of evading the locker room glances; it’s not as hard as it should be. If anyone thinks anything, it’s just that Stiles is body-shy. And why wouldn’t he be, when all of his friends are ripped like Greek gods? So no, no one has seen Stiles shirtless in almost five years, and no one has noticed that they haven’t.

He does not want Lydia to see him shirtless.

But like most of the time these days, circumstances are utterly beyond his control.

They’re not in the woods. In and of itself, that feels ridiculous. It feels like some special tradition is being broken. Turns out that the things like concrete better - less chance of fizzling away their nests, he guesses. Which, of course, means that they’re in an abandoned factory. His life could only be more like a horror movie if he had a fucking soundtrack underscoring it. And now two of the superhuman contingent are gone, leaving three humans, three werewolves, and an undisclosed number of acid-spitting, fast-moving, glowing-eyed things that have quickly crawled their way to the top of Stiles’s Most Hated Creatures list.

Boyd, Erica and Isaac are twitchily scanning the area with their superior vision, and Allison is covering the others with a bow and arrow. This leaves Stiles and Lydia crouched over several bottles of volatile chemicals. As is too often the case, their plan is to fix it with fire. No one voices their relief when they hear Derek’s car peeling out of the lot, but it’s there. Then Scott is there too, and Boyd is beckoning them forward, pointing out the nest, which holy shit the things actually do fizzle the concrete into submission, because that is a nest. Made out of concrete.

The fire does its job, but not before a couple strays manage to escape and cause panic again. Boyd, Erica, and Scott all manage to evade the spit, Isaac only gets it on his scarf, Lydia’s far enough away, and Allison has shot the damn thing with an exploding arrow before it’s even turned to face her. Stiles isn’t so lucky. He’s starting back to his Jeep before the thing’s creepy dying wails even subside. There’s already a hole through one shirt and it’s starting on the second, and he knows he has to take them off.

There are footsteps catching up to him, and Stiles does not want Lydia Martin to see him shirtless.

Stiles also does not want any more chemical burns than he’s already dealing with because holy _shit_ that hurts. He peels his shirt off and keeps moving.

He keeps a spare shirt in the trunk of his Jeep. There are things he can expect to need at strange times. Like flares and a suture kit and spare shirts. Like the box of baking soda and two-gallon jug of water that are also in his trunk. Stiles can’t control the circumstances, but he can damn well prepare for them. And if he’s in the minority when it comes to his expectation of dealing with acid burns at 6am, well, at least he’s not in the unprepared part of the minority that ends up actually dealing with acid burns at 6am.

But he can’t put the shirt on until he’s dealt with the chemical burns, and then Lydia’s there, vinyl gloves (also courtesy of the Jeep’s trunk) already on, mixing the baking soda and water into a paste. She covers his shoulder evenly in the paste, and he can’t quite bring himself to look her in the eyes until she’s finished flushing the area with water and he’s put his fresh shirt on.

They stand by the Jeep for a long time, listening to the sounds of the flaming creatures die out. He’s glad he’s not watching it, but he’s not fond of this silence stretching between him and Lydia. Is it awkward? Is he supposed to say something? Is she supposed to say something? He doesn’t want to deal with the shit he knows they’re all told to say about stuff like this.

Finally, he snaps. “You’re not going to ask-?” He gestures. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but talking at all trumps Not Talking.

Lydia narrows her lips, and it looks like she bites the inside of one cheek. “We all have our shit that gets us through,” she says, finally, “Do you want me to ask?”

“No.”

“Marvelous,” she says, face relaxing as she tosses her hair back, as if there isn’t baking soda paste clinging to one still-perfect tress. Stiles thinks that a couple of months ago, that action would have made him want to kiss her, or made him put a layer of fresh paint on her pedestal. Now he sees his friend, standing next to him, facing the same world in her own way. That’s what makes him want to kiss her these days.

He likes this perception of Lydia better, he decides.

As he turns to get in the Jeep, Lydia grabs his arm, and holds up a finger for him to wait. She pulls the ever-present sharpie from his back pocket and wordlessly draws a small circle on his palm. She starts towards Allison’s car with a bright “goodnight!” even though the sun has been up for almost two hours now.

Stiles stares at his palm for a few moments behind the wheel of his jeep. He isn’t sure what Lydia expects him to do with this.

It isn’t until he gets a text that afternoon - “didnt get them all meet there 4pm” - that he realizes that he’s been unconsciously rubbing the spot all day, the way he’d absent-mindedly poke at a bruise.

 

3-

It’s after a run-in with what turns out to be faeries, of all things, that they end up alone in the Jeep (Lydia actually prefers to take the Jeep - she’d rather see it get beat up by super-strength creatures than her own car). They’re both breathing heavily, giggly from the exhilaration of just being alive, and frustrated with the knowledge that they haven’t solved the problem yet. They catch each other’s eyes in the middle of the bizarre laughter that keeps bubbling up, and there’s a moment.

It’s not the kind of moment that Stiles used to experience with Lydia. It’s not a moment when the sun catches her hair and takes his breath away. It’s not a moment when she smiles perfectly and it makes his stomach swoop. It’s not a moment when she’s let her mask slip for just a second and he can see just how brilliant she really is. No. It’s a moment when their eyes meet and she’s there. She’s in that moment with him, both of them spilling a mess of emotion and reaction every which way.

Stiles balks and starts to turn away at the same time that Lydia says “Kiss me.”

He does. She kisses back. They kiss in a way that’s probably considered sloppy, but Stiles doesn’t care and he doesn’t think Lydia does either, because it’s good. It’s great. Even though the gear shift is in between them, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Even though he kicks the gas pedal and the Jeep revs while still in park, and his elbow - or Lydia’s? when did she get so far into the driver’s side? - hits the horn. It’s fucking fantastic.

At some point, Lydia makes the decision to bring this to the back seat, and Stiles takes a moment to turn the Jeep back off - no point wasting the gas when he has no plans to leave for a while yet - before Lydia is pulling at the back of his shirt and only some fancy acrobatics (he refuses to call it flailing) saves him from landing in the footwell behind the passenger seat.

They keep kissing, open mouthed and gasping, and Stiles knows there’s still mud all down his side where he dove out of the way of one of those tiny fuckers. The door of the Jeep is not comfortable against his back and the position is weird, but Lydia is holding him there and that alone has Stiles panting before she even starts nipping at his neck, just below his ear.

He’s solved the earlier problem of where to put his hands, because the skin of Lydia’s back is perfect. He could run his hands up the dip of her spine over and over, so he does, pushing the material of her shirt up as he goes. Then Lydia’s there with his own shirt bunched around her wrists. She says “up,” and he lifts his arms, pulls away from the door, letting his shirt disappear over the top of a seat. He’s almost grateful now for the night with the acid-spitting things. There’s no explanation or excuses that he needs to make, no unpleasant conversation that will stop the delicious motion of Lydia’s hands.

As their hands explore further and further, Stiles vaguely notes that the waning crescent moon is breaking out of the cloud cover (maybe it’ll stop raining at last). The light makes Lydia glance up from where she was worrying his skin between her teeth (is he going to have hickies tomorrow?).

“Wait!” Lydia pushes herself up from Stiles’s chest, and his stomach drops out, its space quickly filling with the thought that it was too good to be true, or that he was pushing her too far, or that he’s gotten something wrong.

But Lydia’s still talking, “Wait, wait wait! They’re tied to nature right? They operate in a cyclical manner!” Stiles stares at her blankly before it sets in that she’s talking about the Faeries.

(He wants to be bothered that she’s been thinking about them at all while they’ve been making out, but it’s not like he can complain. He may have been designing a comfortable, yet still functional, car door interior in the back of his mind. He may also have been planning a research spree into sexual and emotional responses to surviving life-threatening situations. So really, he has no place to call someone out on still being able to think while having mind-blowing makeouts.)

“Um?” he provides intelligently, and Lydia flips her curtain of hair behind one shoulder (Her blouse is unbuttoned past her bra, and is slipping off one shoulder entirely. Stiles wants to run his lips over that skin.) “I need something to write with,” she says, her imperious tone edging back into her voice.

Stiles lifts his hips and wiggles the sharpie out of his back pocket again, trying not to react visibly to the tug on his jeans. He holds it out to Lydia. “I don’t have any paper,” he says, “Um, napkins in the glove box?”

But Lydia has already uncapped the sharpie and is talking rapidly, marker poised over Stiles’s chest. “They first attacked Derek on uh -”

“It was a Wednesday,” Stiles provides.

“Okay, so that would have been the 13th, and it was around 8pm. And then nothing until the 21st. 4am.” She’s started writing, sitting back on her heels over his knees, right arm using the backrest for support while she writes in that same quick, careful hand across his chest. The felt tip is light and almost ticklish, and Stiles thinks that he probably shouldn’t be so turned on by this, but he is, and he blames it on how oversensitized his skin is after Lydia’s feather-light touches and deliciously sharp nails. “So that would actually have been 22nd. It looks like nine days, but then the this one was at 8pm again, and it’s the 26th.”

She’s charting it out across the lower portion of his ribcage now, looking for the pattern. When she finds it, she gives a triumphant “Ha!” and circles something on his abdomen. “They’ll be at their weakest early Friday morning.” Lydia caps the marker and grins down at him.

Stiles can’t help but grin back up. That is until she shifts her weight forward again, and he shudders. He’s on his back in his Jeep, Lydia Martin seated on his lap with a sharpie in her hand and a perfect, wicked gleam in her eye.

He doesn’t have a single hickey the next day, but his torso is still covered in Lydia’s precise handwriting. He doesn’t wash it off immediately, just pulls on a fresh t-shirt and smiles a little to himself. They have some fucking faeries to deal with.

 

4-

Stiles is staring at his phone at 3am when Lydia calls.

“Are you sleeping?”

“No,” he answers.

“I can’t,” she says.

He doesn’t want to say “me neither,” because it’s obvious and feels so cliche. He almost wants to thank her instead, for being awake, or for making the call when he just couldn’t, for something, everything. All he says, though, is “yeah.”

He’s standing outside her door less than ten minutes later, and she opens it before he even knocks. She’s already got hot water on the stove, and she moves the kettle off the burner before it can start whistling.

They drink chamomile tea, and talk about books and internet memes and pretty much anything that isn’t school or werewolves, or the shitshow that was yesterday night (and last month, and seven weeks ago, and Halloween weekend, and every fucking full moon, and the list goes on). They’re both yawning by five, when Stiles finally admits, “I get freaked out when Dad works the night shifts.”

Lydia just nods. Stiles wonders if she’s ever felt a sense of protection from having her mother in the house. He doesn’t think so, considering she’s here now, asleep somewhere in the huge house, and still Lydia acts as if this house is both entirely hers, and like she doesn’t want to leave the kitchen.

He stands guard in the hall while she uses the bathroom, and then she does the same for him. Neither of them comment on it. Or on the fact that they brush their teeth side by side at the sink. She has a collection of spare toothbrushes in the bathroom cabinet, tells Stiles to mark his and leave it here. It’s not a romantic suggestion, or a sexy one. If anything, it’s disquieting. He pulls the Sharpie out of his back pocket again, puts an S on the handle, and tucks it into a corner of the cabinet.

The sun still isn’t up when they’re ready for bed, and Stiles for one doesn’t want to make out now, doesn’t want to ask for sex now. Lydia pulls out a sketchbook and starts to prop herself up against the headboard. Stiles wordlessly hands her his Sharpie and lays down on his stomach, shirt already off.

She doesn’t use the Sharpie. She pulls a box of nice, fine-tipped markers out of her desk and seats herself on his thighs. He isn’t sure what she draws, if it’s abstract or realistic. A couple times it feels like she’s working out equations. She picks different colors, and Stiles thinks about tattoos, and how much better this is. The lack of permanency means that Lydia can do this again, and again, and again.

Finally, daylight begins to brighten the room, and though she doesn’t turn out the light, Lydia does climb into bed. They fall asleep at dawn, with Stiles’s fingers just touching Lydia’s elbow.

He wears a white shirt the next day, and can’t help but laugh at the ink stains he finds on the inside when he takes it off. Even if the laugh is tinged with something unpleasant and uncontrollable at the onset of darkness. He hates the night.

 

5-

Lydia Martin has always hosted a New Year’s party.

Technically, it could be argued that Lydia’s mother always hosts the party, but in the past few years she’s given over the honors to Lydia. It may be Ms. Martin’s name that gets signed at the end of the very carefully planned shopping trip. It may be Ms. Martin’s I.D. that is used to purchase several cases of champagne online. It may be Ms. Martin’s multiple flatscreen televisions that display the countdown. And it may be Ms. Martin’s house that Lydia’s guests make themselves comfortable in. But hosting is not just about who pays and whose house is offered over for the invasion. Hosting is about who smiles at everyone, and who makes the rounds to check on all the guests, and who makes sure that the whole thing goes off beautifully. It is Lydia’s party now.

Ms. Martin usually goes to a friend’s house for the night. Or a lover’s. Lydia hasn’t bothered to check in on how exactly Christa and her mother refer to each other these days.

She tells all this to Stiles as he pushes the cart around the Whole Foods.

Stiles used to think that this was Lydia in her element. The total makes Stiles choke (he’d stopped adding it all up in his head before they’d even started the second cart), but Lydia hands over the credit card with a smile instead of a wince, and signs her mother’s name with a practiced flourish. Then she makes Stiles wait in the car while she goes into the liquor store for a few last minute needs (they’re running low on white rum and Boyd’s cocktails are going to be in high demand; it’s not everyday that you encounter an aspiring bartender who can spend an evening mixing and trying the same drink over and over until it’s perfect without getting even a little tipsy). When she comes back, Lydia is miffed over the fact that the cashier didn’t even comment on how young she looked for her age. There are downsides, she tells Stiles, to using your mother’s I.D. instead of investing in a fake.

Stiles tells her, truthfully, that the cashier was probably too intimidated by her to comment on anything at all. From her laugh, he can tell he’s right.

As far as Stiles is concerned, the party goes off without a hitch. Scott and Allison are on-again, so there is no moping for him to contend with. His father knows where he is, gave him permission to be there, and hasn’t even threatened to drop by and check in. The sheriff did, however drive him there, and has told him in no uncertain terms that the only car he will be getting into in the next 24 hours is the cruiser. There are messy, platonic kisses all around when the ball drops There are also some messy, not-so-platonic kisses for others (Stiles has not asked, does not plan to ask, has in fact made plans to not ask Scott about the Isaac thing). Two crown jewels top the end of the year: there are absolutely no werewolf-related messes to deal with (well, superpowered klutz Scott McCall broke a vase, but that hardly counts) and the Martins’ new sofa is the most comfortable thing he has ever encountered.

Stiles wakes to a soft tickling sensation on his face. When he starts to open his eyes, a soft hand comes up to grip his chin.

“Lydia?”

The most mischievous look he has ever seen on Lydia’s face comes into focus. It’s a look he’s sure bodes ill for anyone who sees it, but he can’t help but want to smile through his apprehension. Everything feels so far removed from the panic and anxiety he’s become so used to pushing against.

“You drew on my face!” he accuses, “While I was asleep!”

Lydia pulls on her innocent mask, but not so much as to hide her amusement.

“You were passed out. But perfectly safe, I checked.”

Stiles sits up and glances around. The room is empty, and he has a feeling that Lydia has spent the last hour or so tidying away the empty cups and decimated hors d'oeuvre platters. “I”m going to tell everyone that Lydia Martin has sunk so low as to draw on people’s faces while they’re passed out drunk,” he threatens, “No one will believe this was anything more than a common frat party then.”

“No one will believe that I would do such a thing,” Lydia plasters the false innocence into her voice, and Stiles can’t even be mad at her.

“Spoken like a true con artist.”

Lydia laughs, tosses her hair, and smiles, “I don’t think Sharpie on your face has ever be considered a con. _And_ I’ve already outclassed pretty much everyone to come before me by not drawing a penis.”

“Well, thank you.”

Lydia offers her winning smile. “You’re very welcome.” Then she offers her hand, and her genuine smile. “The sun comes up in an hour, want to watch from the roof?”

Stiles takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet.

They sit on the roof and share a huge mug of hot cocoa (Stiles hadn’t meant to kick his own off the windowsill, but sometimes these things happen while effectively scaling a building in the predawn hours). They talk for awhile about what it would be like to fly. Lydia favors wings, while Stiles favors Superman-style: no extra appendages to get caught on door frames. Neither of them even brings up the fact that physics rules both options out entirely. It’s probably because they’ve both realized in the past year that current science isn’t quite up to scratch, but Stiles prefers to think that it’s because these are the things you can talk about just before the first sunrise of the year, and you don’t need to qualify them and bog them down.

The sun crests the horizon right around 7:30, but they stay on the roof until it’s peeking over the treeline. It doesn’t really feel right to watch the sunrise without seeing the sun.

“What did you draw on my face?” Stiles asks during one of the oddly natural silences.

“Oh,” Lydia shrugs a little, “I just wished you a happy new year.” She taps his forehead on and each cheek as she speaks.

It’s not until after he’s suffered his father’s amusement the whole ride home that he gets the chance to see his reflection. His face does indeed say “Happy New Year”, but the elegant cursive is written backwards, so that it takes the mirror to read it. He smiles a little to realize that Lydia’s message, however typical for the season, was just for him.

 

 

6 (+1)-

There's something about the smell of a hospital that makes Stiles twitchy. It makes him feel like he's ten again, and so incredibly scared.

And it's _stupid_ , he thinks vehemently, one knee pulled up to his chest, foot caught on the edge of the chair while the other one beats out an unsteady rhythm on the linoleum floor. Stupid stupid _stupid_ that this is what's getting to him. That he's faced monsters, and faeries, and actual fucking demons; and held his ground; and bit back the dry taste of fear; and yet here he is barely keeping from going to pieces in a hospital because of how it _smells_. He keeps his arms crossed over his stomach, fingers clutching none-too-gently into his sides. It hurts, but he doesn't really pay attention. His thoughts are still chasing one another. He knew better than to leave before he'd heard from Scott. He should have picked up his phone. He always picks up his phone. Always. There's a reason he always picks it up and even driving at high speeds isn't a good reason not to because otherwise how is he supposed to know that he's driving the wrong way. And how stupid does he have to be to not pick up his phone when Scott calls and he's driving to go save his ass. And everyone's ass. Stiles can’t look up at the door across the hall. He can’t because he's very, very carefully studying the linoleum. Who the fuck came up with a pattern like that? Why does everyone accept tiny gray, white and tan blotches as a standard for hospital floors. And oh fucking god does he hate hospitals. He feels himself grimace and tightens his fingers because if any of the nurses have a moment to notice him it's going to be when he's on the verge of tears. And really, Stiles, really? You're going to cry? Because the hospital floor looks like a hospital floor and the hospital air smells like hospital air and because you drove the wrong direction and now there are people in the hospital?

The thoughts keep going around and around, and distantly he knows what this is. ADHD often includes racing thoughts, medicate the inability to focus, and suddenly it's so much easier to hyperfocus on individual thoughts among all the racing. Add onto that the fact that Adderall also has a side effect of heightened anxiety.

Oh, he thinks, this might be a panic attack.

He stays perfectly still, except for his foot. Or leg, really, he's bouncing the whole thing up and down. The rest of him is still, though, muscles all as taught as one of Allison's bowstrings.

More time passes (or doesn't) before a pair of shiny brown heels step onto his linoleum. He could pick out the pattern in the knit of her stockings if he looked long enough, but Lydia says his name, and her voice pulls his eyes up to her face.

“It's time to go home.”

Stiles grows conscious of cramping in his fingers, and tries to ease them open. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, his voice sounding weird and distant, and not necessarily like his own. His throat feels constricted, and he’s still not sure how to draw in a full breath to continue speaking. “Visiting hours just ended.”

“No, Stiles,” Lydia says, squatting down to be at eye level, “Visiting hours ended over an hour ago.”

He glances around, sees that the nurses seem to have changed shifts, and down at one end of the hall, a janitor has begun mopping. He stands slowly, stretching out his limbs, wincing, and determinedly not thinking about the time loss. Now that his focus has expanded again, the intense sharpness of detail is gone, and everything feels gauzey and vague. For a moment he stands still, not yet convinced he should leave, and not even sure he really comprehends the idea. Then Lydia reaches down and laces their fingers together. “Come on, you need to sleep.”

Stiles wants to argue that it's not really late yet, but instead he follows her quietly to her car and climbs into the passenger seat. He didn’t sleep last night, he remembers. They're five minutes from his house when she finally speaks, “It's not your fault.”

“I know.”

Lydia takes her eyes off the road long enough to give him a studious look. “Do you really.” She doesn't ask it as a question.

Stiles breaks eye contact first. “No.”

Lydia sighs. “Well it's not,” she says, knowing as well as he that this statement won't change anything. He pulls a small smile, though, for the effort. He tries to the do the same thing for her, when he can; maybe repetition will do something that logic can’t.

When Stiles shuts his bedroom door behind him, he leans against it, bracing himself on the solid object. He uses the hand that’s tangled up with Lydia’s to draw her back against him. He tries to wrap her presence around him like a blanket. Tries to draw the same strength from her lipstick that she does. Tries to put her as a defense between himself and those racing thoughts.

They make it to the bed before the dam starts to break. He sobs himself hoarse into her lap, apologizing too many times and being remotely aware of the wet spot he’s leaving on her skirt through the more immediately vivid thoughts of the people in the hospital. He feels culpable. He tries to say “it’s not my fault,” but he doesn’t know how to convince himself with the words. He had all the tools to protect them at his disposal. He doesn’t know how to reconcile that with the fact that he isn’t supposed to feel guilty about this. He doesn’t know how to look at all the things in his life and not feel this violent, crushing sense of responsibility. He’s not sure how anyone continues to breathe when there’s so much to think about.

Finally he can’t cry anymore and he’s left counting the stitches in Lydia’s stockings. She’s carding her fingers through his hair, and once he’s done shaking, he can feel that those fingers are trembling. He’s still twitchy though, can’t keep still. They arrange themselves in silence. Lydia with her face buried in a pillow, shirt and bra discarded, and Stiles propped up beside her, sharpie in hand.

While Stiles draws, Lydia speaks haltingly. “It’s not your fault,” she says several times, and “you can’t be expected to- can’t expect yourself to be able to-” She buries her face deeper into the pillow and breathes deeply, exhales something like relief. “Sometimes I inhale too deeply,” Lydia starts, “I try to fill my lungs all the way, but it makes the scream start to build. And I can feel it. If I don’t fight it, I’ll scream out all of that air. I’ll be heralding someone’s death.” Lydia is silent for a long time. Long enough that Stiles reaches up to touch her hand. “It’s not your-” he starts, but Lydia speaks over him.

“They’ll die anyway.” Lydia swallows. “It’s not like I’m killing them, or even just _not saving_ them. By the time I feel them crossing over they’re- well, I can feel them crossing over. But that’s just it. And I can feel it when I _breathe_. It’s like their last breath becomes my scream and I can’t breathe until they’re done breathing.” There’s a long moment while they both become too aware of their own lungs. “I don’t like having this connection to death. Some of the lore says I have one foot in the realm of Death. I don’t want that.” Her words peter out again. Stiles twines the fingers of his left hand with hers, draws and draws, and hopes that his love can travel through the felt and ink. “It’s not our fault,” Lydia says after a long silence. Stiles squeezes her hand.

He fills her shoulders with large, sweeping curves. While Lydia’s breathing speeds and hitches with her own sobs, he touches her hair and back gently. He draws the long lines of pin feathers down past her waist. Her breathing evens out as he works. He covers her shoulder blades in careful feathers and down made from plain black ink. Her breathing slows. Stiles has never considered himself an artist, but he’s good at mimicry. He has spent hours since the first dawn of this year studying how a bird’s wings look, how feathers align and how they join back into the body. He puts everything he can remember into this drawing, losing himself entirely in the details. He’s unsure how long he works, but by the time he’s done, Lydia’s back is covered in a pair of wings. Stiles would never make it as a tattoo artist, but he thinks he’s done a good job on this.

Lydia stays still, except here her ribs expand and relax with long, deep breaths as Stiles caps the marker and puts it on his night stand. He ditches his jeans onto the floor and tugs his quilt up over both of them, resting his face next to Lydia’s. Her makeup is smeared and he can smell stale hospital coffee on her breath. The jitters and anxiety have finally settled into something manageable and he lets himself close his eyes, forehead almost touching Lydia’s.

They lie there, pinkies touching, breath ghosting back and forth between them, counting each other's eyelashes and freckles, and waiting for the eerie calm to melt into sleep. This time, they fall asleep before the sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> Self-Harm tag is specifically for Section 2, which implies POV character (Stiles) having and covering self-harm marks. Discusses another character / romantic interest becoming aware of his scars. His method is not discussed, nor is specific location. It is implied that his self-harm is ongoing. (The marks are mentioned in passing in Section 3, and semi-intentional pain/discomfort is present in the panic attack in Section 6 (+1))
> 
> Panic Attack tag is specifically for Section 6 (+1), which has a pretty detailed description of the POV character having and recovering a panic/anxiety attack. The second paragraph of that section is his stream of conscious during the panic/anxiety attack. He loses some time during his panic attack. 
> 
> Hospitals tag is for Section 6 (+1).  
> Acid Burns tag is for Section 2, though the wounds are not described or discussed in detail.  
> Explosions tag is for Section 1.  
> Underage Drinking tag is for Section 5.  
> Wings tag is for Section 5 and 6 (+1).  
> Fear of the Dark tag is for Section 4.  
> PTSD tag is for the whole work, but specifically 4 and 6  
> The rest of the tags are touched on throughout the story.
> 
> This story is meant to fill the “wings” prompt on my H/C Bingo card.


End file.
